norml21 - Page 6

 persons other than the actor, i_eo, victimless, was the
 enforcement of the societal majorityVs religious and moral
 values_ That these acts are still subject to criminal sanctions
 today - 200 years later - is testimony to the fact that they are
 anachronistic vestiges of a concept of governmental authority
 which has no place in today's society and was not intended to
 have a place in a new nation founded on the concept of maximum
 individual liberty and minimum governmental interference°
 Bo Legal development and law enforcement in the
 American Colonies during and i_nediately preceding
 the adoption of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments
 indicates that the intention of the framers was to
 remove government from the enforcement of personal
 morality_
 The American Revolution and the years following brought
 profound changes in attizudes toward crime and the criminal.
 Prosecutions for various sorts of immoral_:ty nearly ceased, while
 economically motivated crimes and prosecutions therefor greatly
 increased. 42 NoYoU_ Lo Revo, s_ra p_3, at 455° As noted by
 Historian William Eo Nelson:
 During the fifteen years before the
 Revolution there had been an average of
 seventy-two prosecutions per year for sexual
 offenses_ nearly all for fornication° The
 first ten years after independence produced
 only a slight decline to fifty-eight cases
 each year. However, in ].786 the General
 Court enacted a new statute for the
 punishment of fornication, permitting a woman
 guilty of the crime to confess her guilt
 before a justice of the peace, pay an
 approximate fine, and thereby avoid